Today's portfolio shot is an unusual interior photography shot taken in Cognac, France.

You are not meant to take photos in the cellars at some Cognac Houses. But on a tour I saw this view and had to ask. And the nice gentleman said one shot would be fine. Just one. I had lagged back in the group on the tour, carrying my camera around but being frustrated at the thought of not getting any pictures of this fascinating place.

I was glad I asked though. The security man must have taken the view that me taking one image would be ok – no-one else would know as they were all way in front of me so there wasn’t going to be a barrage of photos being taken.

As I said a fascinating scene. Unusual and a nice complimentary image to the picture of wine barrels in Bordeaux.

A tricky capture this one. Taken on my Canon 6D using an ISO of 25600. The lens was the Canon 8-15mm zoom lens. Incredible!

25600 ISO.

I remember when 1600 was considered so high you had to be careful (ISO25,600 is in effect four fold increase from ISO 1600).

At such a high ISO with such a low aperture I could comfortably handhold the shot using a shutter speed of 1/60th second at F4. I only had one lens with me on the tour, quite cunningly my Canon 8-15mm lens, set at the 15mm end of things.

Tricky processing this too.

The image submitted for my portfolio has had a little bit more work. It is interesting that my portfolio images all appear to be getting similar additional treatment, which now I think about it is giving some clues about the way forward.

Basically most of my portfolio images have received the following kinds of processing

Highlights emphasised

Shadows emphasised

In effect the dynamic range within images has been expanded.

Image brightness – more/ less as required.

Cleaning up of annoyances, distractions

For this image I did the following additional work.

Dodged the face of the front barrels and the two bright lines under the lights to brighten them.

Painted some noise reduction bottom right. Finally added a further vignette with a strength of -19.

This was a single had held image in virtual darkness. Focus is sharp, and yes there is some noise but nothing that detracts from the photo.